English journalist and author of "Hitler's Pope" John Cromwell stated: "Pius XII "had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany. ... But even if his prevarications and silences were performed with the best of intentions, he had an obligation in the post-war period to explain those actions"

First of all, if they like John Cornwell, it is pretty incompetent to call him John Cromwell. I actually first suspected an Ulster Scot eager to defend the honour of his ancestor Oliver the Tyrant. No. John Cornwell who wrote the book was actually raised Catholic, then fallen away, and is now a Catholic again. Yes, there are Catholics who do not like Pius XII ... I do not share the usual reasons, like those given by John Cornwell, though he is less idiotic in this quote than some who said the same thing twice over and claimed Pius XII had no right to keep silent under the war either.

John Cromwell as a contemporary is into films, not journalism. John Cromwell as into journalism died well before the period we talk about. John Wesley Cromwell was a negro and a freed man before becoming a journalist. He was born in 1846.

But the incompetent fan club may have missed the part where John Cornwell says "had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany. ... But even if his prevarications and silences were performed with the best of intentions" although they actually quote it. Are they even quoting it correctly? Did John Cornwell use the word "prevarication" here? Possibly, see wiktionary:

1) (now rare) Deviation from what is right or correct; transgression, perversion.

2) Evasion of the truth; deceit, evasiveness.

3 - 5) [combinations of above or Roman legal background to both having same word]

I only knew the first sense. Rare though it be.

So, on top of being silent - which Pius XII was - he was also deceitful? To whom? To Hitler, if to anyone, he had a correspondence with Truman! But Hitler already knew that Pius XII was not in his fan club, so that was hardly deceitful to him either.

In 2009 John Cromwell later described Pope Pius XII as a sympathizer of the Nazi party.

Hitler offered the Catholic Church in Germany more teachers, more school buildings, more Catholic pupil places. At the same time, as was known to Catholic bishops and indeed to Pacelli [=later Pius XII] and the then-Pope, Pius XI, Hitler was withdrawing wide-ranging educational benefits from Jews. Hitler's generosity toward Catholic education in Germany coincided with the mass dismissal of Jewish teachers and university professors and a drastic reduction in Jewish pupil places. Pacelli and the hierarchy's willingness to accept educational benefits from the selfsame source of power that withdrew them from Jews signaled an eloquent collusion with, if not intentional endorsement of, Jewish persecution. Hence they behaved like fellow travelers to the Nazi cause: aloof from Hitler's ideology while accepting his beneficence.

Would you consider this is very well resumed in the following and already quoted? Here again:

In 2009 John Cromwell later described Pope Pius XII as a sympathizer of the Nazi party.

I would not. I would however very much say that if Jews had always been so decent to Catholics under régimes like Roman Pagan Emperors, like Persian invaders in Palestine (where the Palestinian Catholics of the time were mostly their own kin), like Protestant and French-Revolutionary and Communist powers, and even in US, as Pacelli and the hierarchy was here being to the Jews, in profiting from their malefactors without ANY direct abettal of the malfaisance, then Catholic Antisemites would have been pretty rare.

Have no Jews whatsoever profited from the Third Republic in France where Ferry and Combes were ruining Catholic education? On the contrary, they have supported the Third Republic and its persecution against Catholic clergy teaching Catholic pupils in a Catholic way.

And has France not right now a Jewish minister of education* who has declared he wants Catholicism out of the way so he can have a Republic with a Spirituality of what he calls freedom? France has that. [Update: had, 2 April he was replaced by Benoît Hamon] Presumably he would call Catholicism the religion of Knechtschaft, as the Nazis did many times, despite initial conveniences for Catholic education.

So, if we are to accept Cornwell's criteria, we must ask Catholics to be Antisemite in retribution for all that the Jews have done? Or shall we, simply, rather not accept Cornwell's criteria? Maybe kinder to the Jews, isn't it?

Let's get back to the incompetent fan club. Let's give them one credit: Alban Schachleiter was indeed a Benedictine abbot and he did indeed shake hands with Hitler. But this was not totally with the Vatican's blessing (ok, handshakes are not counted and registered, one would not even be excommunicated for shaking hands with Antichrist, at least not as long as he was not identified and excommunicated as such**, but I mean his general attitude):

A year later however, Schachleiter was writing to Oswald Spengler lamenting the impact of Erich Ludendorff and his anti-Catholic followers on the movement—following the refounding of the NSDAP in early 1925 the stronghold of the Nazi movement in Bavaria would no longer be Munich but rather the Protestant regions of Mittel- and Oberfranken. Schachleiter increasingly distanced himself from the NSDAP in the mid-1920s, although he maintained an idealised image of Hitler personally.

Schachleiter continued for years to be angry at Ludendorff's anti-Catholic crusade following the putsch of November 1923—after maintaining his weekly Schola Gregoriana at the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche in Munich until 1930, he then moved to a newly built country house in Bad Feilnbach where he was still living when Hitler came to power in 1933. In late spring Schachleiter wrote to Cardinal Faulhaber—"it seems to me to be a catastrophe that the Holy Church stands aloof from the new freedom movement, whose triumph I foresaw, and that the massive uprising of the volk, which is now lifting our poor fatherland out of its misery and shame, may well go down in history as a triumph of Protestantism." Faulhaber forbade Schachleiter from performing masses within the archdiocese, and Schachleiter reluctantly refused Hitler's request for him to come to Berlin on 20 March 1933 to perform a personal mass for the fuhrer. Hitler visited in mid-May to personally congratulate Schachleiter on his 50th anniversary as a Benedictine. His invitation to sit among the Nazi dignitaries at the Nuremberg party rally in 1934, which he accepted, (and an enduring image through Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will), showed him "on the sidelines as the Nazis' striking, yet thoroughly secularized, performative aesthetic played out before him."

From 1933-1936 Schachleiter spent much energy campaigning against what he saw as peripheral Nazi personalities directing the Nazis in an anti-Catholic and anti-Christian direction—and particularly the ideology advanced by Alfred Rosenberg. Schachleiter regarded this as a restraint on a renewal of wide-ranging Catholic support for the NSDAP. Schachleiter eventually wrote more than two dozen appeals to a variety of Nazi officials, including Hans Lammers, but was ignored. In September 1936 he admitted privately to a friend that, "a believing Christian can no longer participate [in the NSDAP]; they do not want believing Christians in the party." Publicly he continued to profess loyalty to the Führer and to the church, despite Hitler and his regime's continual persecution of Christians in the Third Reich.

Following his death in June 1937 the Nazis ordered a state funeral arranged by Bavarian minister-president Ludwig Siebert.

And since he died in 1937, he did not see the worst of the régime. Since he was born in 1861, he was already 72 years old by the Machtübername. And Hitler had been a nicer fellow during the Bierhallenputsch than - at least politically - he became later.

Now, Cornwell also wrote, at the end of his book review:

Professor Owen Chadwick, the recognised authority on church history in the period, has written that Kaas's vote for Hitler's dictatorship is "one of the most controversial acts of German history." Kaas would have been horrified had anyone accused him of being a brown priest, and yet he did more to support Hitler's regime than all the brown priests put together.

Before that he had noted that Kaas was the spiritual and political leader of the Catholic Centre Party. A non-Nazi and previously anti-Nazi party. But which dissolved itself to get the concordate going. His comparable figure in Austria, Father Ignaz Seipel (a Jesuit) had not done the same mistake, nor were his lay successors Dollfuss and Schuschnigg doing so. And just in case anyone thinks for a second I am a Nazi, my loyalties are with the Christlich-Soziale Partei of Austria. As well as with Zentrumpartei in Germany, the one that Kaas dissolved. Without being against Schachleiter - who alas had too little influence on Nazi politics, and Erich Ludendorff and Rosenberg and Bohrmann (Hitler's minister of education, like Peillon* is Hollande's) and Himmler*** had too much influence on it.

On 7 April, directly after the third meeting of the working committee, Kaas once more left Berlin and headed for Rome. The next day, after having changed trains in Munich, the Prelate happened to meet Vice-Chancellor Papen in the dining car. Papen officially went on skiing holidays to Italy, but his real destination was Vatican City, where he was to offer a Reichskonkordat on his government's behalf. Kaas and Papen traveled on together and had some discussions about the matter on the train. After their arrival in Rome, Kaas was received first by Pacelli on 9 April. One day later, Papen had a morning meeting with Pacelli and presented Hitler's offer. Cardinal Pacelli subsequently authorized Kaas, who was known for his expertise in Church-state relations, to negotiate the draft of the terms with Papen.

These discussions also prolonged his stay in Rome and raised questions in Germany as to a conflict of interest, since as a German parliamentarian he was advising the Vatican. On 5 May Kaas resigned from his post as party chairman, and pressure from the German government forced him to withdraw from visibly participating in the concordat negotiations. Though allegedly the Vatican tried to hold back the exclusion of Catholic clergy and organisations from politics, Pacelli was known to strongly favour the withdrawal of all priests from active politics, which is Church position in all countries even today. In the end, the Vatican accepted the restriction to the religious and charitable field. Even before the Roman negotiations had been concluded, the Centre Party yielded to increasing government pressure and dissolved itself, thus excluding German Catholics from participating in political life.

It is alleged° that Pius XI favored Hitler as a "bulwark against Communism" and therefore signed the Reichskonkordat through which Hitler gained international respectability. Relevant documents have only been made available by the Vatican since 2003, but there remains no evidence of that. On the other hand it has been argued that the Pope faced the alternative of either signing a concordat or provoking another Kulturkampf by not giving the Catholics a legal basis to defend themselves. Later on, the concordat was the basis for formal complaints about the Third Reich's measures against the Church.

But after citing Schachleiter, the page by Charlie Adams is seriously wrong:

Adolf Hitler greets Muller the "Bishop of the Reich" and Abbot Schachleitner. ... Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, Berlin, 1934 ... National Bishop Friedrich Coch giving a Hitler greeting in Dresden, 10 December 1933 Dresden pastor Friedrich Coch is one of the leading men of the "German Christians" in Saxony. [Picture captions.]

Charlie Adams, are you even aware that "Muller" alias Ludwig Müller and Friedrich Coch are Protestants?°° They owed no allegiance whatsoever to the Vatican, did you know that?

Ludwig Müller (23 June 1883 – 31 July 1945) was a German theologian and leading member of the "German Christians" (German: Deutsche Christen) faith movement. In 1933 he was imposed by the Nazi government as Reichsbischof (Reich Bishop) of the German Evangelical Church (German: Deutsche Evangelische Kirche).

Life

Müller was born in Gütersloh, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, where he attended the Pietist Evangelical Gymnasium. He went on to study Protestant theology at the universities of Halle and Bonn. Having finished his studies, he worked as a school inspector in his hometown, from 1905 also as a vicar and assistant preacher in Herford and Wanne. In 1908 he became parish priest in Rödinghausen. At the outbreak of World War I, he served as a Navy chaplain in Wilhelmshaven.

After the war, Müller joined the Stahlhelm paramilitary organization and continued his career as a military chaplain, from 1926 at the Königsberg garrison. He had been associated with Nazism since the 1920s, supporting a revisionist view of "Christ the Aryan" (or a "heroic Jesus") as well as a plan of purifying Christianity of what he deemed "Jewish corruption," including purging large parts of the Old Testament.

There is no English wiki about him. But Coch and Müller were the kind of Protestants that both Prussia and Nazism preferred over Catholicism - and that amply explains how come Cardinal Bertram and others were eager not to give provocation. The Centre Party had been founded to defend Catholics against the persecution of Otto von Bismarck, known as Kulturkampf (note that Coch had Otto as a middle name).

Why is there no English wiki? Perhaps because English speakers are primarily Protestants and as such not eager to seek out the Liberal Protestant roots of Nazism.

Here is another picture caption from Charlie Adams:

An Archbishop with the Nazis

Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, head of the Diplomatic Corps, attending the Nuremburg Party Rally in September 1933.

According to Dr. Paul O'Shea, Orsenigo, as Dean of the Corps, it was the Nuncio's role to lead the Corps at all major government functions. After 1935 Orsenigo did not attend major government propaganda displays.

Honest to cite that bit of after 1935! But does Charlie Adams even note how depressed Orsenigo looks in September 1933? Seriously, this man is too eager to condemn Catholicism to even look correctly at his own evidence!

* Vincent Peillon, for those unaware of the [previous] situation here. Knechtschaft is German for Servitude or Slavery. Update: on April 2 2014 he was replaced by Benoît Hamon, as far as I know not Jewish. Peillon was from Alsatia and could probably speak German, but Hamon is a Breton.

** And as vitandus. To be avoided. One can be excommunictaed in diverse degrees, and some are not condemned to public shunning.

*** Wikipedian article on Schachleiter cites Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism, Hastings, p.133, for stating that "[f]ollowing the commemorative activities of 10 June 1923, which included a massive rally in honour of Albert Leo Schlageter, staged on Munich's Königsplatz and attended by 20-30000 activists—a Catholic memorial mass was held immediately after the rally in St. Boniface Abbey, organised exclusively by the NSDAP which was presided over by Schachleiter. ... Schachleiter delivered a eulogistic sermon that was remembered as having a powerful impact—a young and devoutly pious Heinrich Himmler joined the NSDAP in the wake of Schachleiters eulogy." But Himmler was not really Schachleiter's man, was he: "In 1923–24, Himmler, while searching for a world view, moved away from Catholicism and furthered his interest both in the occult and in antisemitism. Germanic mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, became a substitute religion for him. Himmler found the NSDAP appealing because its political positions agreed with his own views."

° Wikipedian editor after the one saying this adds a question "who?" - I could point to Serbs like JBQ in the following (from a blog mirroring my debates, mainly):